NEW YORK — Eli Wallach — a raspy-voiced character actor who starred in dozens of movies and
Broadway plays, and earned film immortality as a conniving bandit in the classic Western
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly — has died. He was 98.

The actor’s son, Peter Wallach, confirmed yesterday that his father passed away on Tuesday
evening in New York from natural causes.

“The best way to honor him is to put on one of his movies,” he said. “Put on
Baby Doll or
Magnificent Seven. Those live forever.”

Wallach and his wife, Anne Jackson, were a formidable duo on the stage, appearing in several
plays dating back to the 1940s.

He won a Tony award for his supporting role in Tennessee Williams’
The Rose Tattoo in 1951, was an original member of the Actors Studio and was still
starring in films well into his 90s.

“He was as wonderful a person as he was an actor,” said actor Robert De Niro. “He will be
missed.”

Wallach might be best-remembered for his role as Tuco in
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. In the 1966 Sergio Leone spaghetti Western, Clint Eastwood
(the Good), Lee Van Cleef (the Bad) and Wallach (the Ugly) attempt to outwit and outshoot one
another in pursuit of a trove of gold coins buried in a Civil War cemetery.

Wallach played a menacing yet lovable outlaw who had committed every crime in the book.

His character had several memorable lines, including, “When you have to shoot, shoot, don’t
talk,” after being confronted by a rival gunslinger.

Wallach, an eager storyteller, even titled his 2005 memoir
The Good, the Bad, and Me: In My Anecdotage.

He and Jackson starred in a series of plays, including George Bernard Shaw’s
Major Barbara in 1956 and a hugely successful run of
Luv in the mid-1960s. A critic once hailed them as “the proletarian Lunts” — a reference
to Alfred Lunt and wife Lynn Fontanne, then the most famous couple in the American theater.

“Although I limp in life as a result of my two hip operations, whenever I go onstage with Anne,
the lights give my body a lift and I prance onto the stage and dance off,” Wallach says in his
memoir.

“I feel I can play a 16-year-old if the author calls for that. Which is why I prefer live acting
to film — I come alive with the lights.”

Wallach was born on Dec. 7, 1915, in the New York borough of Brooklyn, the son of an immigrant
candy-store owner.

He dabbled in dramatics in high school while becoming a table-tennis champion.

His brother and two sisters had become teachers, and other family members were doctors and
lawyers. Wallach, who had appeared in plays as far back as grade school, elected to study
acting.

Wallach once said of his family, “Being an actor to them is like joining the Foreign
Legion."

His drama training was interrupted by World War II service in the Army medical corps, in which
he earned the rank of captain.

From 1945 to 1948, he appeared in several Broadway plays but had to work as a camp counselor to
make ends meet.

His debut film, directed by Elia Kazan, was the racy
Baby Doll (1956) based on another Williams play. It was condemned by the Catholic Legion
of Decency for what was termed its “carnal suggestiveness.”

Other memorable roles were in
The Misfits (1961), the last film for both Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe; and
The Godfather Part III (1990), with Wallach as a mobster.

He became a charter member of the Actors Studio, along with up-and-coming performers such as
Marlon Brando, Karl Malden and Jackson. He was one of the nation’s early students of Method
acting.

Although he never won an Oscar, Wallach was awarded an honorary Academy Award in 2010, hailing
him as “the quintessential chameleon.”

Eastwood presented the award, calling him “a great performer and a great friend.”